I admit, it’s been hard for me to write about music the last few weeks because I’ve turned into a total campaign coverage zombie. So my apologies for dipping into the political on a music blog, but I feel compelled to share a moment from an article by Matt Bai from the forthcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine, in which he describes a rally in rural southwestern Virginia in which bluegrass great Ralph […]
I was elated. I was depressed and confused. I got the heebie-jeebies. But mostly, I was just elated. And depressed and confused. I mean, how often is it, these days, that we hear Godley & Creme’s magnificent 1985 single “Cry” on the radio? And then to hear it in a commercial? And not just any commercial, but a commercial for, of all things, Grand Theft Auto IV. […]
How’s this for serendipity? 20 years ago, journalist Bob Greene wrote a book based on a diary he kept as a teenager in 1964. The book was called Be True to Your School, and, a few years after its publication, it caught the eye of a guy named Gary Griffin, who, as a touring musician, spent a lot of time in airports. Griffin picked up the book at an airport bookstore – just something to read – and one of the book’s diary entries, in which Greene notes that he picked up the new 45 by the surf music duo Jan & Dean, caught Griffin’s eye. At the time, Griffin was playing keyboards for the legendary duo as they were making their way across the country in their annual summer tour, and after a few phone calls had arranged for Bob Greene to join them at a show. Â
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As it happened, Greene’s starry-eyed meeting with the aging rock ‘n’ roll idols of his youth turned out to be the start of a beautiful friendship – with Jan Berry, Dean Torrence, and the guys who helped them deliver there two-and-a-half-minute odes to fun in the California sun to Midwestern state fairs, Mississippi casinos, private corporate parties and reunions across the country every summer; and his latest book When We Get To Surf City is an affectionate memoir of the days and nights he spent on the road with these “Lost Boys”, as he calls them – men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s playing their iconic songs about “The New Girl In School” and places like “Drag City” and “Surf City” as if they were still teenagers, and in so doing, providing the nearest possible approximation to a portable fountain of youth.Â
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